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The Mechanics and Rhetoric of Conversation - part
8
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Actually, the worst feature of the overuse of and and so is not the poor rhetoric but the flabby, chatterbox logic. It betrays the talker as someone who among ideas does not recognize the difference between a colonel and a recruit. It is this lack of discrimination among ideas that as much as any other one thing makes for boresomeness in talking. When a woman says, "It was Saturday and I wanted to go to confession. So at three o'clock I took the car and drove to church. But the confessor did not come until four, so it was almost five before I got home," she can have the face of an angel and the voice of Galli-Curci, but she will still be boring. The minimum subordination necessary to keep those ideas from being boring is, "Since it was Saturday, I wanted to go to confession. At three o'clock I took the car and drove to church. But the confessor did not come until four, so that it was almost five before I got home."
A still better rendering would be, "Since it was Saturday, when I wanted to go to confession, I took the car at three and drove to church. The confessor, however, did not come until four, so that it was almost five before I got home." This rendering is correct, rhetorically. However, a really superior talker would go a step further in reducing some of the ideas. She would instinctively calculate which is the most important idea she wished to convey. If it is to explain to her mother-in-law why her husband's dinner was late Saturday, she would subordinate everything around that point. She would then say, "Last Saturday, wanting to go to confession, I drove to church at three, but because the confessor did not come until four, it was almost five before I got home." Now we have a sentence in which the ideas, "I went to church and came home late" stand out sharply because all the other ideas are reduced to phrases, such as "wanting to go," "Last Saturday," and to subordinate clauses, such as "because the confessor was."
Such subordination is the rhetorical requirement for superior conversation. If you have that, even if you have little else, you will seldom be boring. If you do not avoid at least the most flagrant co-ordination — stringing all ideas together with and and so — you cannot have St. Paul's edge of liveliness, no matter what your knowledge or topic or voice. As the shortest cut to improvement, simply make up your mind not to use and or so noticeably often. Secondly, keep asking yourself which is your most important idea. Then strive to put the lesser ones into phrases and subordinate clauses. It would be highly advantageous if you got yourself a college composition book and reviewed the sections on co-ordination and subordination.1
1 Virtually any recognized college rhetoric textbook will do. It happens that I have found the following most helpful in classes: Easley S. Jones, Practical English Composition, 3 ed. (D. Appleton-Century, 1941), pp. 159-195.
Related terms include how to improve speaking skill and how to improve your english speaking.
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